"It (Nazism ) was, however, only a radical expression of an ideology and wide-ranging forms of social discrimination and persecution that were hardly a German monopoly before the Second World War. Racial anthropology was well represented in Italy (Cesare Lombroso), Social Darwinism in England (Alfred Russell Wallace), eugenics in the United States (Francis Galton), and anti-Semitism in France (Eduard Drumont, Maurice Barrès, Georges Vacher de Lapouge, and many others). "

"Moreover, the exacerbated nationalism and biological racism of the Nazis were closely linked to the culture and practice of imperialism that had characterized the whole of Europe since the beginning of the 19th century. Germany had not played a leading role in this development. On the contrary, it was a latecomer, a keen pupil following the two great colonial powers, France and Britain. The natural supremacy of the white race and its corollary, Europe's civilizing mission in Africa and Asia; the view of the world beyond Europe as a vast area to be colonized;  the idea of colonial wars as conflicts in which the enemy was the civilian population of the countries to be conquered, rather than an army; the theory that the extinction of the inferior races was an inevitable consequence of progress: these central tenets of Nazi ideology were commonplaces of 19th-century European culture.

"Nazism was also a product of the first world war, the total war that was the real founding experience of the 20th century. Therein lay the roots of industrial extermination, the anonymous death of millions, and the authoritarian re-modeling of European societies in the inter-war period. As the historian George Mosse has convincingly demonstrated, the First World War began a brutalisation of political life of which Nazism was the culmination. In the context of the civil wars and uprisings that shook Russia, Germany, Hungary and Italy between 1918 and 1923, fascism emerged as a typically reactionary, nationalistic and anti-democratic movement. To that extent, it was indeed the offspring of the counter-revolution waged throughout the "long" 19th century, from the anti-Jacobin coalition of 1793 to the massacres that followed the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1872."  

Views on Halabja

Cyber search indicates that many well known journalists like Robert Fisk and Prof Juan Cole also believe in the US -Western version of Halabja massacres, based on Human Rights Watch's conclusions from captured documents after the uprisings instigated by George Bush Sr. in 1991.[ Any material which falls in US government hands is likely to be tampered with.]

Titled "Fact & Fiction" ,Prof Juan Cole wrote on 2-04-03

"In a recent New York Times op-ed, Stephen Pelletiere argued that the March, 1988, gassing of Kurds during the waning months of the Iran-Iraq war may have been perpetrated by Iran, not Iraq. This issue has taken on importance because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds is often given as one ground for the U.S. to go to war to effect regime change. As it happens, Pelletiere, a former CIA analyst, is just plain wrong and appears not to have kept up with documentation made available during the past decade.

"As a result of the successful bid for autonomy of Kurds in northern Iraq under the U.S. no-fly zone, tens of thousands of documents from the Iraqi secret police and military were captured by Kurdish rebels from 1991 forward. These were turned over to the U.S. government. Some ten thousand of them have been posted to the World Wide Web at the Iraq Research and Documentation Program at the Center for Middle East Studies of Harvard University: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~irdp/.

The captured documents explicitly refer to Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Kurds, called "Anfal" (spoils) operations. Some documents were reviewed by Human Rights Watch in the early 1990s, which issued a report, entitled "Genocide in Iraq." Robert Rabil, a researcher with the IRD Program, has also published an analysis of the documents, in the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

"The documents under review never mention Iraqi authorities taking precautions against Iranian uses of chemical weapons, and there is no good evidence that Iran did so. Since Iran and the Kurds were allies, Iran in any case had no motive to gas thousands of Kurds. The Baath documents do frequently mention the Anfal campaign of February-September 1988, when high Baath officials in the north were authorized to gas the Kurds." He also said, 

"My own knowledge of the horrors Saddam has perpetrated makes it impossible for me to stand against the coming war, however worried I am about its aftermath. World order is not served by unilateral military action, to which I do object. But world order, human rights and international law are likewise not served by allowing a genocidal monster to remain in power". [italics added]

I admire Prof Juan Cole's efforts to provide up-to-date and comprehensive information on Iraq and the region on his Blog , which I visit regularly and recommend to others. I wrote to him about his assessment of Halabja massacres now but have not received any answer.

Professor Mohammed al-Obaidi ,an Iraqi and the spokesman for the People's Struggle Movement (Al-Kifah al-Shabi) in Iraq, and a university professor in the UK wrote in Al-Jazeera .net on 4 Jan, 2005 that

" After 15 years of support to the allegations of HRW, the CIA finally admitted in its report published in October 2003 that only mustard gas and a nerve agent was used by Iraq.

"The CIA now seems to be fully supporting the US Army War College report of April 1990, as a cyanide-based blood agent that Iraq never had, and not mustard gas or a nerve agent, killed the Kurds who died at Halabja and which concludes that the Iranians perpetrated that attack as a media war tactic.

"Despite the doubt cast by many professionals as well as the CIA's recent report, and after years of public relations propaganda made for the Kurdish leaderships by the assistance and support of the Israeli Mossad, the issue of genocide has been marketed to the international community."

Before the  war, when US leaders were accusing Saddam Hussein of all crimes including the Halabja massacre ,Don Sellar, the Toronto Star's ombudsman cautioned on March 1, 2003.

"A War Crime or an Act of War?" was the way The Times' headline writer neatly summed up Pelletiere's argument.. No doubt, Saddam has mistreated Kurds during his rule. But it's misleading to say, so simply and without context, that he killed his own people by gassing 5,000 Kurds at Halabja. --In light of that, editors need to consider assigning staff back home to do reality checks on claims and counter-claims made in the fog of war.

"As our retrospective on the Halabja story suggests, the bang-bang coverage — gripping though it may be — may not be enough to get the job done. --The fog of war that enveloped the battle at Halabja in 1988 never really lifted. "

Conclusions of US led media been very persistently and vigorously contested by Jude Wanniski with whom I had some correspondence before he passed away last year. A Republican and a former  Associate Editor of the WS Journal's editorial page in the 1970s , he coined the phrase "supply-side economics" and named "the Laffer Curve" after Laffer.